In certain communication systems it may be required that every node in the system be supervised to make sure it is operational and can communicate with other devices and/or other network elements. Since communication may be resource expensive, each device may be supervised by only one other device. However, if this other device malfunctions, then it may be difficult to determine the status of the devices that are supervised by the malfunctioning device. This problem may be handled, for example, by having redundancy, but such redundancy may require additional resources and/or complexity.
In certain wireless communication systems, transmitting is more energy expensive than receiving, or in other words, transmitting is more “energy hungry” than receiving, that is, on average it may require more energy to transmit messages than to receive messages. If, for example, the wireless media is a broadcast media then the transmitting device must ensure that its transmission is received by all intended receiver devices when these receiver devices are ready and able to receive the transmission, whereas the receiver devices may merely be required to listen and receive the transmission with minimal expended energy.